Spring Series

Season 37 returns to the Harris Theater with a specially curated, unique program of favorites and premieres. The company performs, for the first time, the “precision-crafted and multilayered” (The Observer) choreography of Crystal Pite; Cloudless, a duet called “perfection in its unification of choreography, music and lighting” by Germany’s Main Post; two polar opposites by Jiří Kylián: Sarabande and Falling Angels; and a world premiere by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano inspired by Tchaikovsky and George Balanchine.

PROGRAM

A Picture of You Falling by Crystal Pite

Hubbard Street’s Spring Series features the company’s premiere of a solo excerpt from Pite’s evening-length w...MORE Hubbard Street’s Spring Series features the company’s premiere of a solo excerpt from Pite’s evening-length work, The You Show, to an original score by electronic composer Owen Belton. First presented in 2010 at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, The You Show was sparked by the choreographer’s “fascination with familiar storylines of love, conflict and loss,” she explains, “and the body’s role in providing the illustrative shape of those stories.” Founder and artistic director of Kidd Pivot, Pite is also associate choreographer for Nederlands Dans Theater (the Hague) and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (New York City), as well as associate dance artist at the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), and associate artist at Sadler’s Wells (London). LESS

Sarabande by Jirí Kylián

Choreographed between 1986 and 1991, Jiří Kylián’s six “black and white” works are among the most influent...MORE Choreographed between 1986 and 1991, Jiří Kylián’s six “black and white” works are among the most influential in Western contemporary dance. In spring 2014, Hubbard Street added two of these works — Falling Angels (1989) and Sarabande (1990) — to three more already in the company’s repertoire: Petite Mort, Sechs Tänze and No More Play. For six men and set to Bach’s second partita for solo violin, with electronically manipulated sound made live by the dancers’ bodies and voices, Sarabande uses indelible stage imagery to suggest the vast range of psychological states experienced throughout a lifetime. LESS

Falling Angels by Jirí Kylián

A counterpart of sorts to Jiří Kylián’s all-male Sarabande, choreographed the following year, Falling Angels i...MORE A counterpart of sorts to Jiří Kylián’s all-male Sarabande, choreographed the following year, Falling Angels is performed by eight women who remain onstage throughout its 15 transfixing minutes. The group is continually fractured and recombined by the endlessly inventive patterning of Kylián’s choreography and lighting design, both keenly illustrative of Steve Reich’s phased-percussion score: part one of his landmark minimalist composition, Drumming (1970–71). LESS

Cloudless by Alejandro Cerrudo

A pair of women echo, reflect and shadow each other in Alejandro Cerrudo’s intimate, encrypted first duet for fem...MORE A pair of women echo, reflect and shadow each other in Alejandro Cerrudo’s intimate, encrypted first duet for female dancers. Berlin-based composer Nils Frahm’s progression from classical student — scholar Nahum Benari was an early teacher — to contemporary creative artist mirrors Cerrudo’s own path into and through choreography. Cloudless is “tender and intimate,” says dance critic Catherine L. Tully, “without being soft and sweet.” LESS

I am Mister B by Gustavo Ramírez Sansano

Commissioned by the Harris Theater, the See the Dance Consortium, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this origina...MORE Commissioned by the Harris Theater, the See the Dance Consortium, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this original work for Hubbard Street’s ensemble is set to the final movement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s third suite for orchestra in G major (op. 55, 1884). Stage décor for the work is by award-winning designer Luis Crespo, with lighting by Jared B. Moore, both of whom contributed to Ramírez Sansano’s 2012 choreographic interpretation of Bizet’s opera, CARMEN.maquia. Branimira Ivanova returns for a second costume design credit this season at Hubbard Street, following the company’s blockbuster collaboration with The Second City. LESS